Better harnessing and utilizing data – TU Kaiserslautern involved in building a national research database

The Joint Science Conference (GWK) approved further projects on July 2nd, which emerged from the multi-stage competition of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). The goal is to build infrastructures for various scientific disciplines to better utilize the abundance of research data. TU Kaiserslautern (TUK) is also involved in three projects. These concern materials science and materials engineering, mathematics, and physics. The members are developing, among other things, the infrastructure and service structure for effective research data management. The federal government and states are providing up to 90 million euros annually for the overall project until 2028.

Data are the raw material of the 21st century. New technologies allow us to search through and evaluate ever-increasing datasets in ever shorter times. They give us insights into the behavior of novel materials, our genetic makeup, or our psyche. They help produce medications or improve weather forecasts. But how should science handle the flood of data? Different methods and procedures are used at each research site to store, analyze, and interpret the data obtained. This is precisely where the National Research Data Infrastructure of the German Research Foundation (DFG) comes in. This nationwide network aims to systematically unlock, manage, securely preserve, make accessible, and network research data in the future. It is essential that the research data found in the databases are "FAIR": Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

Mathematical research data are extensive, complex, and diverse. Due to the interdisciplinarity and the abstraction power of mathematics, they are widely used both within and outside mathematics, with modern developments leading to increasingly complex mathematical models and data. The goal of the Mathematical Research Data Initiative (MaRDI) is to develop a research data infrastructure that will be of great benefit not only to mathematics but also to other fields. Researchers from 18 institutions will cooperate under the leadership of Professor Dr. Michael Hintermüller from the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics in Berlin. For TU Kaiserslautern, Professor Dr. Wolfram Decker and Professor Dr. Claus Fieker from the Department of Mathematics represent the field of computer algebra, while their colleague and head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Techno- and Business Mathematics, Professor Dr. Anja Schöbel, is responsible for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Similar plans are underway in materials science and materials engineering (MatWerk). A 29-member consortium led by Professor Dr. Chris Eberl from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Mechanics (IWM) in Freiburg is working to establish a national research data infrastructure for materials science and engineering. So far, the working groups have developed their own methods to prepare data, for example, on the influence of microstructure on the properties of various materials. These are usually not compatible. The new NFDI-MatWerk aims to change that in the future. The goal is, among other things, to be able to depict various highly complex relationships between different material data to generate synergies and lower technological barriers for their use. This will enable, for example, complex searches and evaluations in the future. From TU Kaiserslautern, Professor Dr. Tilmann Beck from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Process Engineering and Professorin Dr. Heike Leitte from the Department of Computer Science are involved.

The FAIRmat project ("FAIR Data Infrastructure for Condensed-Matter Physics and the Chemical Physics of Solids") addresses a broad spectrum of research areas in physics and related disciplines, such as condensed matter physics and the chemical physics of solids. There is a multitude of data from different measurement techniques and working methods that need to be considered. A 60-member consortium led by Professor Claudia Draxl (Humboldt University Berlin) is working to improve data accessibility. The team around physics professor Dr. Martin Aeschlimann from the OPTIMAS profile area (State Research Center for Optics and Material Sciences) at TU Kaiserslautern is also involved.

"The National Research Data Infrastructure will lead to a fundamental change in science and research," says Professor Dr. Werner Thiel, Vice President for Research and Technology at TU Kaiserslautern. "I am pleased that we can contribute across disciplines to taking this important and significant step for the German research landscape. I sincerely congratulate my colleagues on this success."

Already last year, a major data infrastructure project for the National Research Data Infrastructure was launched, in which TU Kaiserslautern is involved. It focuses on plant life. The DataPLANT network aims to make data more usable and comparable. The team led by Junior Professor Dr. Timo Mühlhaus from TU Kaiserslautern contributes to linking knowledge-based processing and IT-supported analysis of research data. The German Research Foundation has allocated around eleven million euros for the overall project.